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Culture Stage

Preview: Displacement

DISPLACEMENT choreography by Robert Glumbek. Presented by the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts Dance Theatre Company at the Fleck Dance Theatre (207 Queens Quay West). Continues to Saturday (November 21), Thursday-Saturday 8 pm. $35, stu/srs $30. 416-973-4000. See listing.


Call it Hogtown snobbery. Usu?ally successful shows will begin in Toronto and travel to places like Hamilton, not the other way around.[rssbreak]

But when the run for multimedia show Displacement sold out a week in advance at a Hamilton art gallery and subsequently got rave reviews, the artistic team knew they wanted to mount it for a larger crowd.

“If Vitek believes in something he’ll put his own money behind it,” says choreographer Robert Glumbek about the driving force behind the show, Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts Dance Theatre Company founder Vitek Wincza.

The dance artists, both born in Poland, have known each other since their frequent collaborations with the Robert Desrosiers Dance Theatre, where Glumbek was a star member in the 1990s. A few years ago, Wincza approached Glumbek with the idea of presenting a work about displacement.

“Obviously as an immigrant, it’s a subject that’s close to my heart,” says Glumbek in between rehearsals.

But what really sparked his imagination was the chance to collaborate with others, like composer Christos Hatzis and visual artist Vessna Perunovich.

While each of them’s from somewhere else – Hatzis from Greece and Perunovich from Serbia – Glumbek insists the piece isn’t your typical immigration tale.

“It’s complex,” he says. “There’s the arc of a journey, of people leaving a place, but we’re also looking at those left behind.”

Some of this will be suggested by Perunovich’s designs, which include a see-through installation suggesting a house and a series of projections. Hatzis’s score, performed live by the Penderecki String Quartet, begins by evoking a train.

One of the production’s more striking elements, says Glumbek, concerns elastics (see photo, above).

“You try to run, to separate yourself from the past, but you can’t, because you’re connected by blood,” he says.

After the Hamilton run, one respected local critic (no fool, incidentally) compared the show to William Forsythe and Pina Bausch.

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” laughs Glumbek, who’s received accolades throughout his long career as a dancer and choreographer.

“He was probably taken by the theatricality of the piece,” he says modestly. The original was performed as a walk-about production in an art gallery, but it’s been adapted for the Toronto run to the proscenium Fleck stage.

“Vessna’s installation was so fantastic. It brought a little bit of Pina Bausch’s aesthetic to it.”

glenns@nowtoronto.com

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